


Doomsday Averted

by pyalgroundblz (acidtonguejenny)



Category: Dresden Files - Jim Butcher, Inception (2010)
Genre: Crossover, Dresden Files Kink Meme, Gen, Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-01
Updated: 2012-12-01
Packaged: 2017-11-20 00:02:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/579074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acidtonguejenny/pseuds/pyalgroundblz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry's subconscious takes 'militarization' to entirely new levels. <i>The moment they come awake in the mark’s dream, it’s obvious that something is wrong.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Doomsday Averted

**Author's Note:**

> Brought over from Scribe-Portra's kinkmeme and cleaned up. This version has a different ending than the original post, which [can be found here](http://scribe-protra.livejournal.com/215580.html?thread=3160348#t3160348) :3

The moment they come awake in the mark’s dream, it’s obvious that something is wrong.

Cobb steps out from beneath the awning, face set in that frown that makes him look older. He surveys the street, the layout of the city, and when he turns to meet Ariadne’s eyes she knows he’s come to the same conclusion she has.

“This isn’t my stage,” She tells the others, and instantly has their attention. Eames looks cool as ever, but she’s known him too long now and is familiar with his ticks and habits. The way he slides a hand down his waistcoat is a tell: he’s nervous.

Arthur stiffens.

“…Where are the projections?”

It’s then they notice how the crumbling streets echo, empty and unwelcoming.

\--

"He wasn't militarized, he can't be." Arthur scowls as their group rounds a corner. Cobb hasn't had a chance to so much as look at him sideways.

"You said you weren't able to find much on him," Eames points out, winding him up out of  
habit. No one blames Arthur this time; information on the mark had been scattered and confusing.

He still watches Dom’s back, shoulders squared and defensive. 

Ariadne is too busy watching the corners, the shadows that seem twitch and writhe around them to comment. There's a sense of dread weighing on them that Arthur's griping and Eames's prodding, usually grating, somewhat alleviates.

The towering, eroded skyscrapers above them seem to groan beneath the weight of themselves.

“I don’t like this place,” Ariadne says in a small, frightened voice.

Arthur turns to say something that probably won’t be reassuring but is cut off by a cry for help.

The team freezes, and all look to Dom for an order. Projections don’t make sounds like that. They don’t do anything to distinguish themselves.

Their leader looks very worried. Ariadne swallows.

\--

Cobb decides to follow the sound, the cry. It bounced strangely to reach them, but they eventually discover the source to be a man, staggering through the streets and leaning on buildings for support. His clothing is ragged and bloody, and even when they agree to approach him they walk slowly, close ranked. Reluctant.

“It’s the mark.” Eames realizes for them all.

It is. The tall men they’d left snoring on the hotel bed in Chicago, where their employer had promised he could be found.

Cobb jogs to him, showing his palms in the universal “Calm! Peace! Unarmed!” gesture when the man badly startles and lurches. He’s so unsteady on his feet that he falls. Cobb speaks to him, approach slowly, until he’s allowed to help the mark to his feet.

\--

Ariadne and Eames manage to work out of the man that yes, her locked apartment exists, relatively where it was supposed to be, the one where they'll find the secrets they were hired to steal. Dresden doesn't want to take them there, though. He hedges, describes some fearsome shadow creature that haunts the area, lurking in the corner of your eye, snapping at your heels in gusts of stale air.

"I was heading for the lake," he tells them, picking at his t-shirt, wincing as bits of fabric pull on the wounds they've dried against. "There's some kind of light there."

"Light?" Cobb inquires, glancing at Ariadne. She shrugs. "No idea."

Dresden didn't hear her. "Yeah. It's warm, and when you stand in it you feel safe. I think it heals." Their mark holds out one forearm, pointing to a line of new scar tissue that runs into the crease of his elbow. "It only appears sometimes."

But their agenda doesn't allow for field trips to magic light shows, and they're all thoroughly ready to have had done with this job. Tag-teaming, they manage to convince Dresden to forgo the light and take them directly to the locked apartment.

They convince him, but he's still not happy about it.

"You'll see what I mean when we get close," He says, gruff. "I warned you."

He leads them through the labyrinthine city. The path winds and twists as he takes them across intersections, through housing complexes, and into narrow, tilting alleys. The sky seems to creep in closer every time Ariadne looks, and the winds that blow through the streets chill her bones.

She can tell when they're getting near. Those same shadows that Eames had stepped around when they first arrived appear again. Now they seem thicker than before and... _malevolent_ \--which they could be, in this nightmarish dreamworld. Ariadne swears she hears voices coming from the darkest patches, and she doesn't fail to notice how Dresden's route keeps them firmly in what meager light makes it through the skyscrapers.

When they reach the correct building, the gapping doorways are sealed with sloppily hung pegboard and chicken wire. Cobb and Dresden wrench the obstructions free, nails squealing shrilly as they're pulled free. Past the entrance, broken furniture fills the hallway so they're forced to clamber over it, dressers and beds and slanted rocking chairs. Ariadne shies away from a crib with rotted bars and a short leg. Water drips from the ceiling and puddles on shadowed surfaces, to be discovered beneath a bracing hand.

The stairwells reek, and trash crunches underfoot. Ariadne notices Dresden mumbling to himself in a steady stream as he tromps upwards, two floors, three. He keeps his limbs in close, his long body bent and made as small as he can manage, hands thrust deep in his pockets.

With a furtive glance, she follows his example.

\--

The final door they have to pass looks like Ariadne could huff and puff and blow it out of its frame, but reveals itself to be improbably sturdy when pitted against Eames's shoulder. When they finally get in, the apartment is nothing special. One room, empty, peeling wallpaper, water damage, and ripped linoleum. Arthur's shoe catches on one such torn piece and he stumbles. His curse startles them all; possibly Dresden most, whose mumbling has kicked up a notch. He's grown noticeably twitchier, hanging slightly away from their group.

Ariadne begins to wonder why he even entered the apartments with them. She opens her mouth to ask, but Eames cuts her off with a triumphant noise. He snatches a moldy manila folder from the floor: their secrets.

"…What now?"

He turns to show them. It's filled with blank paper.

Cobb's expression is difficult to translate. He looks anxious, off-center and angry, and Ariadne worries he's going to file his temper on her, but--

Shadow pours from the walls and barricades the door and angled window before any of them can shout. The blanketed walls _pulse_ and draw in. Ariadne backs into someone, moving just because her entire brain is screaming RUN, and someone is...someone is laughing...

There is darkness. She feels a wind sweep across her shoulder blades and shrieks when Eames backs into her, away from the white-glowing eyes that have rushed at him. Arthur screams, and his warmth at her opposite side vanishes as he's ripped from the dream. Cobb pulls her to his chest (she struggles against his hand before making out his face in a flash of white) and curls around her, Eames putting his back to hers. The white eyes take him with a screech, a bastardized roar, then Cobb. 

Alone, splattered and shivering, Ariadne closes her eyes and waits to wake up.

\--

A hand strokes through her hair, accompanied by a sensation not unlike a washcloth wiping at the arterial spray. Light blinds through her eyelids, and Ariadne sobs.

"Please, I just want to wake up now…"

"Shh," The arms come around her and she's drawn against a woman's chest. "Breathe. It's almost over."

"What went so _wrong?_ " She wails.

The hand resumes petting her hair. A motherly kiss is placed between her eyes. "Rarely is a wizard's mind defenseless, and the one you chose to invade is…more densely populated than most." There is humor in the bright woman's voice, and what a lovely voice it is. Ariadne wants to look--the woman must be beautiful--but she's still too frightened to open her eyes.

"Please," she says again, snuffling into the woman's shoulder.

"Yes," is the reply, and the hand in her hair tightens with inhuman, crushing strength.

\--

Back in the hotel room Eames is knelt over the trash bin, back heaving, and Cobb keeps a gun trained on the still sleeping mark. Arthur stands quietly by the door, paler than normal. When he see Ariadne has stirred, he begins to pack up the PASIVs. She joins him after reaffirming her center of gravity. Cobb doesn't budge the gun, holding at least one white-rimmed eye on Dresden's back through the sight as they move around him. Eames brings the bin with him when they filing out, Cobb last.

"Never again," Arthur says. It sounds like a pledge. Ariadne doubts it'll be more than a month before he's back at Cobb's elbow, clamoring for work, but as she's still herself shivering and Eames's leg thumps irregularly against cheap plastic, she can't help but think the same.


End file.
